goodnight pond

I updated last week about the unfortunate and unexpected circumstances with the Goodnight Pond books and am happy to announce the books are going on sale tomorrow night – Wednesday January 23rd 2013 after 5pm pacific. The books are $15 plus shipping. Domestically they will be mailed flat rate priority and international to Canada, UK and Australia they will go out economy international. Sorry, not able to mail out to other places at this time!

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If you haven’t checked out James Hance and his awesome geeky mashups then you are missing out!

After this final release of this edition the next is moving to the forefront. Yay! More on that will come soon!

I’ve leaked some spoilers on Twitter and Facebook about my other upcoming projects so I will let you all know officially – I’m finishing up a book that is about food allergies and specifically for parents of children with food allergies. After being a parent of a daughter with life threatening food allergies for almost 11 years I’ve spent a lot of time helping other families who are in similar situations. One of my hopeful goals with my blog and social media work was to become a bigger advocate and resource for families who deal with food allergies. After the absolutely amazing and beautiful response from friends, family and online homies I’ve dedicated the last several months to really consolidating our experiences into a book that will hopefully inspire, create some laughters and share some tears. My daughter has contributed to a lot of the direction of this book. It is our heart and I cannot wait to share it with you all.

Beyond that I also need outlets that don’t feel so heavy at times. I’ve been working on hilarious haiku books about things no one should probably talk about. There will be a series of Haiku e-books meant to make you giggle and occasionally wonder, “Did she REALLY just write that?!”

Gotta keep you all on your toes!

Thank you all for the awesomeness in this amazing project and the support in my world of madness. Keep on ninja kicking to happiness because you all absolutely freaking deserve it!

I can’t believe it’s been over six months since this journey began. First… I apologize for the radio silence. I was trying to sort things out and figure out what was the next step for Goodnight Pond before announcing any spoilers.

First, I want to thank James Hance for the illustrations for the first edition of Goodnight Pond. Unfortunately, the source files were damaged and compromised and are now unusable. Gotta love technology! Reprinting from compressed files was deteriorating the quality of this project which is something neither of us wanted. This was devastating and unexpected. Because of how difficult it is to redo artwork and the workload that James Hance has he is, understandably, unable to reproduce the work. Because of such I am moving forward with the project.

The last copies of Goodnight Pond will be for sale soon on my site. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of final copies but I will give ample notice on the sale date. If for some reason you did not receive your copy in the original run or a refund from Mr. Hance please contact me directly and I will resolve this. I want the priority to go to the previous purchasers before releasing the last ones into the world! These will be shipped priority mail and handled by me personally. Once gone they are gone for good.

What’s next?

Onward, upwards and geronimo!!

Goodnight Pond is getting a full facelift, new interactions with the characters and adding additional pages that tell the full story of our little companion. I always felt it wasn’t complete before and now it is. The book is also getting renamed slightly… which will be announced officially soon!

A new illustrator has been hired and his work is impeccable. There will be no rushes on this work and before a release I plan on having a print and digital option for this. Yes, the book about the girl who waited will continue to be a wait. However, the release will be worth it.

All the support is greatly appreciated and I’ve gained so much from this despite the rocky start. As with anything in life there are always unexpected turn of events and I believe on moving forward and ninja kicking through those obstacles.

I look forward to sharing this story with you all and hope you fall in love with it as much as I have. Thank you all for the radness.

First – you may have stumbled here and are wondering – What is ‘Goodnight, Pond – A parody book for the next hopeful companion’?!

“Our brand new self-published book, a tribute to one of the most beloved bedtime stories ever, and one of the most successful SciFi shows of all time is stacked with geeky little references for Whovians of all ages to enjoy. It’s soft bound, measuring 8″ x 7.5″ with 24 full color pages of geeky goodness. It is, quite literally, bigger on the inside!”

This is illustrated by the amazingly talented and well known pop-culture mashup artist James Hance and we co-authored this book together. What happens when two creative geeks hangout and obsess over Doctor Who? This book.

Sometimes I’m not the best at hosting giveaways. I love them but I’m not that uber giveaway lady. Sometimes I worry that they will fall flat… Yes, sometimes… even the ninja kicker… fills her head with doubt…

I thought… wow, I should have done this sooner. No one will enter. Will there even be Whovians at the blog conference? Would anyone really care to meet me at the conference and talk about the book??

The end result? Was so insanely heartwarming! The response to the book, contest and those that found me in the halls asking to take a look at it was amazing.

I honestly wasn’t expecting it and walked away with such an elated feeling that I am sincerely thankful for.

Thank you to those that entered the contest. Thank you all who just wanted to read the book. Thanks so much from the bottom of my crude sarcastic heart for all the genuine loveliness. James Hance and I are gobsmacked by the response.

We want to give back in ways that we can as a thank you for all the support on this project. So, I’m hosting another giveaway – this time ALL can enter. Not just those who were attending the conference. Good luck everyone and thanks again for all the awesomeness!

If you don’t get the book right away then you aren’t obsessed with Doctor Who and I demand you figure that out! If you are a Doctor Who fan then this book is honestly amazing. James Hance and I have poured so much in to this self published book project and the response has been heartwarming.

Many bloggers have asked if I would be having anything going on with this book at the conference. So, I decided… lets do a little giveaway. The only thing is that you gotta meet up with me at BlogHer to get your copy of ‘Goodnight, Pond’ and take a picture. I like pictures! As part of the Aiming Low crew I will be at the Come As You Are party Saturday night and will be taking TONS of pictures there so you will have to stop by – even if you don’t win a copy. I like meeting people and I promise not to tackle you (okay, I can’t promise that)

I had new business cards and awesome stickers made by Lindsay Goldner of LLY Designs that I will be handing out at BlogHer this year. These are rad!!!! I also have some fun bottle opener keychains left over from the events this past year. Uh, I just like giving people ish they like and having an excuse to break the ice. Come up to me and say “Yo, ninja I want some stickers!” and all will be well

If I tried to illustrate anything it would look like a series of decapitated and otherwise mangled stick figures surrounded by blobs. The blobs wouldn’t even be impressive.

James Hance is an artistic genius who causes geeky artistic viral waves of radness on Facebook and Tumblr... and I make toddler scribbles look good. I’m totally okay with this.

Neither of us really know how the idea unfolded but as soon as that spark lit we created something that seemed like it was meant to be. Something every Whovian out there would want to read to their children and create a generation of mini-Whovians who would rather put on a bowtie than a cape.

Okay, maybe not to that extent but we freaking think it would be brilliant! (I say that word now because of his British ways and watching too much BBC)

I’m not going to give you spoilers on Goodnight, Pond. I’m not even going to explain why I love using the word spoilers so much! Okay, maybe just a few…

I’m not going to try to give you a sales pitch on why it’s a must have (because you just HAVE to get it). I’m not even going to threaten to send my ninjas after you if you don’t buy it (though, I totally would). I’m not even going to explain what Doctor Who is (Netflix it, Start watching it, I’ll talk to you in a week my soon to be newbie Whovie).

I’m just going to say that it is truly brilliant (there that word is again) and the subtle little geek references that you may or may not catch the first reading made us squee actual squees while writing Goodnight, Pond.

I will also say that while the, Relentlessly Cheerful and absolutely adorable James “Wookiee the Chew” Hance paired with the somewhat scary Ninja Kicking Life’s Obstacles to happiness no matter what Leila “Don’t Speak Whinese” Miyamoto, duo of geekery creativity may seem like two polar opposite ends of the geek spectrum, we aren’t. Well, we are. But, collaborating on this project was a seamless process and the end result is something we hope you all love as much as we do.

And… there are many more projects already in the works. More books and collaborations and projects… No, no spoilers. Sorry!

After I announced the co-writting collaboration of radsauce lots of my friends reacted with, “OMG HOW AMAZING!” and “CONGRATS!”(I love my people)

At the very least I try to turn a negative or unavoidable self inflicted pain with something funny. This happens often.

After breaking my ninja kicker last month my creativity went in to sonic boom hyper drive. I couldn’t walk for weeks. I couldn’t do much physically. This was all very difficult for me… honestly, it was one of the most miserable experiences. Me not being able to take on the world, do everything and even NEED help was torture.

But, I started working on projects that have been on the back burner and I needed an excuse to take things easy. I decided to not focus on all the things I couldn’t do and focus on what I was going to accomplish… while needing to completely distract myself from the inability to walk so I didn’t go mad. It also had a lot to do with timing. It wasn’t planned but this idea was something we jumped on, rolled with it and are excited about.

So, there. I broke my foot and wrote a book. Seemed to be the thing to do.

My life is kind of strange. Having said that… I’m very thankful for this crazy whirlwind of geekery awesomeness. I’m thankful for every single person who has supported me and even those who have doubted because that just makes me try harder.